Charles Sheeler (1883-1965)

On assignment for Fortune magazine in the 1930s, Charles Sheeler completed "an extraordinary photographic series contrasting the manmade and natural wonders at Boulder Dam [Hoover Dam]." Sheeler's studies of the scene culminated in extraordinary works such as the gelatin-silver print Boulder Dam--Transmission Towers and the painting Conversation--Sky and Earth. "About ten years after the Fortune series was published, Sheeler turned again to this composition to produce a cover illustration on the theme of electric power for Reader's Digest (February 1941). The design survives in the form of a small pencil drawing [the present work] recording the central core of the composition. To further emphasize the awe-inspiring scale of the dam, Sheeler, with characteristic economy of means, extracted a figure from Suspended Power (Dallas Museum of Art) and placed him, head bowed, between the insulators." (C. Troyen and E. Hirshler, exhibition catalogue, Charles Sheeler: Paintings and Drawings, Boston, Massachusetts, 1987, p. 174)